Trail Blazers Blog

Gov. Rick Perry speaks with reporters in Washington on June 19, 2014, over lunch organized by the Christian Science Monitor.

WASHINGTON – From taking up “planking” to ditching his cowboy boots and boning up on world affairs, Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday he would be far better prepared if he runs for president again.

If he does run again, he said, it would be because “I’m a patriot. … I’m a competitor.” And whether he runs or not, “I do care about these issues that confound us.”

Perry shared lunch at a hotel near the White House with a couple dozen reporters, his first time attending one of the newsmaker events regularly organized by the Christian Science Monitor – itself a sign of his ambitions.

He was peppered with questions about whether he’ll run for president again. He conceded that he was badly ill-prepared last time around.

“I’m glad I ran in 2012,” he said. “It was painful… It was very humbling.” He learned, he said, that having run three times for governor “does not prepare you to run for president of the United States, or to be the president of the United States…. Over the last 18 months I have focused on being substantially better prepared.”

He breezily shrugged off the idea that he’s past the prime age for a contender. “66 is the new 46,” he said.

As for his health, he said the back pain that impacted his 2012 bid is behind him, because he’s shifted from running to low impact exercises such as biking, core strengthening exercises, and “planking,” and from high heeled boots to a flatter dress shoe. He gestured to show the tilt he’s given up.

He also said he’s unconcerned that for now, Sen. Ted Cruz – a relative newcomer to Texas politics who served Perry as the state’s top appellate lawyer – has eclipsed him. At this month’s state GOP convention in Fort Worth, Perry ran far a distant fourth behind Cruz in a presidential straw poll.

Polls, said Perry, are just “a snapshot in time,” noting that he was behind by 30 percentage points early in his last bid for reelection.

And he dismissed the idea that Cruz has remade Texas politics.

“We all get our 15 seconds of fame, right? Whether it was Ann Richards or whether it was George W. Bush or whether it was Rick Perry or whether it’s Ted Cruz,” he said. Reshaping a state as big and diverse as Texas “requires somebody with substantial staying power.”

Such as a 14-year governor.

He called Richards “one of the funniest, most profound and profane individuals” he’d ever served with, “but Ann really didn’t change Texas. … Ask me in 8 years if Sen. Cruz has made an impact on the state.”

He offered a scathing critique of the Obama administration’s policies on climate change, including regulations proposed earlier this month to cut carbon emissions. (The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on a pending legal challenge Texas filed against other EPA regulations.)

“I don’t believe that we have the settled science by any sense of the imagination to stop that kind of economic opportunity” offered by an expansion of oil and gas exploration, and approval of the Keystone pipeline, which would bring crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast.

The governor was adamant that carbon dioxide is not, in fact, a pollutant. Curbing the use of coal will “strangle our economy,” he asserted.

“Calling CO2 a pollutant is doing a disservice the country, and I believe a disservice to the world,” he said.

“I’m not a scientist,” he said. But “short term, I’m substantially more concerned about Iran changing the temperature of New York” – an allusion to a nuclear attack – than about potential climate change 50 years from now stemming from today’s environmental policies.

If you disagree, “you’re a denier,” he said, paraphrasing the president. “I’m offended by that.”

Perry also called the flood of unaccompanied minors across the U.S.-Mexico border a “failure of diplomacy,” striking a tough stance on immigration – an area in which his rivals in 2012 accused him of being relatively soft.

“I’ve known about this for two years. The president has known about this,” he said.

On Wednesday, Perry – with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state House Speaker Joe Straus – authorized $1.3 million in spending per week to patrol the borders.

Until the border is secure, he said, “you can’t have a conversation about immigration policy.”

“I stepped right in it,” he said at today’s event. But he neither repudiated nor elaborated on the controversial remark, instead shifting the emphasis: “Whether you’re gay or straight, you need to be having a job, and those are the focuses that I want to be involved with,” he said.

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The blog for the Dallas Morning News politics team tracks Dallas Fort Worth area, Texas and national campaigns.